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We have written with enthusiasm about the Kapell Beethoven B flat Concerto in earlier editions, and its commanding authority is evident from the outset. Moreover, this newcomer is worth investigating for the sake of the Rachmaninov Sonata.

When William Kapell was killed in a plane crash at the
age of 31 on 29th October 1953 the world was robbed
of a great talent. He learnt the piano with Olga
Samaroff, one-time wife of Stokowski, at the
Philadelphia Conservatory of Music and then at the
Juilliard School. At the age of nineteen his career took
off when he won the Philadelphia Orchestra’s Youth
Competition. He also won the Naumberg Award which
supported his New York début at Town Hall where he
also gained the award for most outstanding musician
under thirty. He then toured North and South America,
Europe and Australia.

With his dynamic performances and Byronic
beauty, it is not surprising that RCA Victor signed
Kapell in 1944. Although he played a wide repertoire
that included Bach, Mozart, some Beethoven, Chopin,
Copland, Barber, Debussy and more, he became known
for his performances of the romantic Russian
repertoire, in particular Rachmaninov’s Second and
Third Concertos and the Rhapsody on a theme of
Paganini, Prokofiev’s Third Concerto and
Khachaturian’s Piano Concerto. All the most eminent
conductors of the day wanted to collaborate with
Kapell, and he performed concertos with such
illustrious names as Eugene Ormandy, Leopold
Stokowski, Leonard Bernstein, Fritz Reiner, and Serge
Koussevitzky.

By 1946 the 24-year-old Kapell had already
stunned audiences with his performances of large
romantic piano concertos by Rachmaninov, Prokofiev
and Khachaturian and had recorded the Khachaturian
Piano Concerto with the Boston Symphony Orchestra
and Serge Koussevitzky in April 1946. Two months
later Kapell gave a performance of Beethoven’s Piano
Concerto No. 2 in B flat, Op. 19, at Carnegie Hall with
the NBC Symphony Orchestra and Vladimir
Golschmann. Although he played Bach and Mozart, he
rarely programmed the works of Beethoven. As a
teenager, like many gifted adolescents, Kapell played
Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor Op. 37,
but during his short adult career tended to avoid the
Piano Sonatas and Piano Concertos with the exception
of the early Piano Concerto No. 2, which was actually
written before Concerto No. 1 in C major, Op. 15, but
published later. It still has traces of Mozart’s style, and
this could be what appealed to Kapell.

The day after his Carnegie Hall performance of the
Beethoven Concerto, Kapell returned to the hall with
the same orchestra and conductor to record the work for
RCA Victor. He had first worked with the Russian
conductor Vladimir Golschmann in 1942 when
Golschmann was conducting the St Louis Symphony
Orchestra with whom he was principal conductor from
1931 to 1957. Although of Russian descent,
Golschmann was born in Paris in 1893 where he
studied, later promoting the works of Les Six and
working for Dyagilev’s Ballets Russes. From 1947,
when he took American citizenship, Golschmann
remained in the United States where, after a long
career, he died in 1972. At the time of the recording
with Kapell the pianist was very much under the
influence of Horowitz’s style of playing, yet his
performance of the Beethoven Concerto has a clarity
and conviction closer to that of Artur Schnabel. Kapell
received advice from Schnabel, but apparently this was
not until after 1947. Abram Chasins wrote of Kapell’s
spontaneous charm and crisp precision in this work, and
he certainly seems to give a performance that is for all
seasons. One can only speculate as to whether Kapell
would have matured into the kind of artist who could
interpret the late sonatas of Beethoven.

A year after Kapell recorded the Khachaturian
Piano Concerto, he made one of his few chamber music
recordings of Rachmaninov’s Cello Sonata in G minor,
Op. 19, with Edmund Kurtz. Kapell loved the music of
Rachmaninov and whereas Rachmaninov was austere in
countenance, outwardly appearing the opposite of the
emotional music he wrote, Kapell seemed to epitomize
the heart and soul of Rachmaninov’s music with his
romantic and rhapsodic persona. His natural affinity
with the music of Rachmaninov made the death of the
composer feel like a personal loss. On the day
Rachmaninov died in 1943 Kapell was working on the
Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini and was moved to
write, “I am comforted that every day I can open the
covers of some wonderful and magic world that he
expressed in music. He shall never die for those who
can play his works or for those fortunate enough to want
to hear them”. The piano part of the Cello Sonata is, not
surprisingly for Rachmaninov, of great difficulty, yet
not only does Kapell surmount the technical obstacles
with ease, he gives a musical reading that is undeniably
one of chamber music rather than that of soloist or
accompanist. Born in St Petersburg in 1908, Kurtz fled
to the United States during the Second World War. He
was principal cellist of the Chicago Symphony
Orchestra until 1944, when he resigned to pursue a solo
career. Both Ernst Krenek and Darius Milhaud
dedicated works to Kurtz, who died in London in
August 2004.

Schubert’s Waltzes and Ländler were popular in
the 78rpm recording era and various groups of these
works had been recorded by Marcelle Meyer, Alfred
Cortot, Eduard Erdmann, Robert Casadesus and
Monique de la Bruchollerie. The eight short works
reissued here are practically the only representation of
Kapell in Schubert. At the height of his career, weeks
before his death, Kapell programmed Schubert’s Piano
Sonata in A major, D. 959, at his concerts in Australia,
but unfortunately did not record the work.

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